


Camellias

by vflower



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-25 20:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9843971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vflower/pseuds/vflower
Summary: She wakes up in an empty room, alone, in the dark. She doesn't remember why she got there. All she remembers is "him."





	1. Prologue (1)

“Ah, but…”  
Turning his back on her, he began to walk away, leaving nothing but a soft ‘goodbye’ behind him, which the girl clutched in her hands so that it leaked out of her fingers and dripped onto the sidewalk. The sun shone through the gaps between the leaving one’s arms and his body, his shadow cast on the other but sliding away ever so slowly.  
“I didn’t want you to go,” she opened her mouth and called after him, but the sidewalk, as if it was wet cement, swallowed her feet, her legs, until she couldn’t move even if all her strength pushed her forward. He didn’t listen; didn’t even turn his head. “Please!” she forced herself forwards a step, crushing the wasted ‘goodbye’ into the ground, “please, don’t leave me like this—“  
Hands clutched around his throat, and he fell to the ground.


	2. Prologue (2)

Heavy breathing. Darkness. A cold room, a concrete floor, a sheet with a crumpled body.

Breathing. Breathing. Breathing.

Ah…

Light.

Light, through the heavy metal door, invaded her eyelids, prying them open as tears rushed forth to stop the burning.  In stepped a man, glasses glinting in the light, who placed a paper plate down on the floor, hanging a clock on the wall. Then, he turned away again, shutting the door behind him as he left. She had been watching him so intently, she hadn’t a chance to crawl forwards out of the room.

She had missed her chance to “escape.” But she didn’t know if she wanted to “escape” from here, this room, as she pulled her body towards the paper plate. It was pitch black again, but her fingers could identify what felt like boiled peas and mashed potatoes. She didn’t like those foods, not one bit, but something compelled her to eat, quickly, before the man came in to take it away from her. When it was completely gone, she rose shakily to her feet and felt around for a doorknob, which she found relatively quickly. Trying it gave nothing, so she sunk down to her knees and waited.

She started to count the seconds on the clock. When she was sure at least four minutes had passed, she tried the knob again. Then she let four more minutes pass. This was a cycle, until the man came in again, opening the door slowly so she could scuttle away from the doorway. He picked up the plate, and left the room, leaving the door open behind him—she scooted closer, cautiously, but he returned a moment later. The man picked her up under the armpits and put her back down on the sheet.

Then, she was alone again.

She crawled back to the door, and spent another hour at least counting the minutes and trying the knob. She fell asleep in front of the door. She woke up. She pressed her body against the door, shoved herself against it, tried to peel the weather strips out from the doorframe. When he delivered more potatoes and peas to her, she grew less accustomed to them over the days, and she stopped eating.

The man switched it out for chocolate cake.

For every meal, it was cake. She worried the food would be worse if she didn’t eat it, but the constant feed of sugar rendered her sick, motionless on the sheet as she threw up day after day after day. Now, she could no longer move at all. Seeing the lack of eating, he switched the food out again, but she wasn’t able to see what it was.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t eat. She laid in a puddle of her own bodily fluids and vomit for days and then weeks and then she was removed from the room and was born again into a white world of light and _clean_ and warm and wet.

Now, Flower took her first breath.

And she cried.

On the operating table, where she was being born again, Flower cried until she was told to shush by a warm hand on her forehead and hugs. The man with the glinting glasses, holding her in his arms, warm and happy and saying her name over and over and over into her newborn ears. Shaking.

There, peering through the curtains, was _“him.”_


	3. "Him."

Quiet.

I have to be quiet.

Crouched inside this cabinet, I can’t move or breathe or speak a word. I haven’t moved a muscle in ten minutes. I don’t want him to find me.

The cabinet door slides open. Ah, I’m no good at hiding, am I?

He’s scooped me into his arms again, praising me for finding such a good spot. I hope he’s not mad. I just went into the quickest spot I could find. He told me to hide, so I did.

Maybe being in the same room wasn’t the best idea.

He’s run out of games for today. My lack of response is nothing interesting to him. I won’t do more than do the basics that he tells me to. He says I’m doing so well. He says I’m a good girl. He says that I’m only getting better.

He’s treating me like an animal.

He doesn’t know I can think.

Daddy puts me down to bed. He stares at me through his smudged glasses. They aren’t warm. Neither are his eyes behind them, cold and unwavering, not matching with the strong warm voice that comes out of his mouth. His warm arms that pull the blanket over me. He’s assured me that there’s no cameras in this room and he’s right—I’ve checked it a million times the second he leaves the room, and today is no exception. Not a single camera.

If I weren’t so good at acting, I know Daddy would have a million cameras in here with me. Watching. Waiting. My every fault will be recorded the day I slip up. The day I open my mouth. The day he hears who I am.

But he won’t.

Sliding out of bed, I go to lock my door from the inside. He can’t get in now, even if he tried. Even if he wanted to try. I go over to the window and slide the curtain open.

Pressing his fingers against my glass, there “he” is.

I watch him exhale onto my window, and his breath fogs up the glass. I press my face to the warm spot on the window. He’s captivating. He’s here. And he’s not my dad. My daddy doesn’t know he exists. My daddy doesn’t know I’m a real person. Me and “him” are real people, pressing fingers against bedroom window glass, exhaling and sharing imaginary air on our inhales.

Daddy thinks I have terrible handwriting, but it’s so he doesn’t know I’m a bad girl. I write my goodnight backwards in my own breath so “he” can read and I close the curtains again, hurrying back into bed and under the covers before anyone ever knows I’m alive and breathing.

With a warm feeling in my chest, I let myself fall asleep.

Daddy comes to collect me in the morning. He undresses me and dresses me again. He changes the bandages all over my body. He makes me food, he plays games with me, he teaches me, and he puts me to bed—a cycle every day, as long as I can remember, Daddy has tried to make me a better girl.

Today he’s putting a coat on me. What? It’s new and it smells like the store—or at least that’s what I think it smells like. Today, Daddy is walking me down the street somewhere. The sun is bright, but covering my eyes would let him know, so I just try not to look directly at it. I don’t think he’s catching me. He’s taught me what all these things are. I know what they are. I know that I’m outside, but the smells and the colours almost bring tears to my eyes.

If I was allowed, I would hide in a flower bed and cry forever.

If I was allowed, I would let Daddy see the wonder in my eyes.

But he can’t know.

He’ll find out about “him.”

Daddy leaves me on a park bench when he goes to talk to another man, who’s wearing a long white blouse and has hair that runs down his shoulders like water.

I hear Daddy’s name. He has a name.

Kaito.

I don’t like that.

He comes back to me, picking me up. He sounds worried, saying we have to go home immediately and whatnot. The other man is giving me a hard look, something of a mix between anger and disappointment. Kaito brings me home, tucking me into bed even though I can see the orange sunset through the window.

So I wait until the sun disappears.

Then, crawling out of bed, I hurry over to the window. I know “he” is there, already, because the clock on the wall reads my bedtime out in big, colour-coded numbers.

“He” is there, pressing his fingers against my window, his cheek, his eyes staring at me with an intensity that makes my heart flutter.

And behind him is Kaito.

Kaito, with his warm hands, lifts “him” up and slams him against my window, over and over and over and over until the grass cracks and breaks and cuts into his skull. “He” is screaming, for the first time I’ve heard his voice, in pain, with blood dripping down his forehead and into his eyes and down, down, down. Then, Kaito moves to slamming his head against the brick wall, until I can barely see what’s happening at all through the spray of blood building up on the window.

Something in me wants to tell me to leave, but I’m still here, frozen, mute, my hand curled around a shard of glass and bleeding on the wall and on the floor. Kaito isn’t going to be happy. Kaito is going to bandage my hand again and call me silly for standing so close to the window. Kaito won’t hurt me.

The noises stop and Kaito walks away, leaving “his” crumpled forehead against the brick.

Now he’s in my room.

I wasn’t able to feel anything, but something kickstarts panic in my chest as more and more people come into my room and grab onto me, wrestling me out of the door, even though Kaito was so gentle I don’t know how to fight. I’ve been buttered up. Readied for the pot.

I can see my unavoidable fate coming, so I let myself cry. It’s dripping down my chin, onto the floor, in my mouth, my throat torn open with some sort of agonised sound coming out in piles and piles and crashing waves of sound, and they just go faster, faster, towards an unmarked door and I’m convulsing and I’m afraid and they open the door and toss me in and I’m _outside._

I can barely force myself to move, but I start crawling away as quickly as I can. I’m out of the driveway. I’m on the road, and there’s a bright light but I can’t move, I’m tired, I’m choking, and then it stops and someone’s getting out and there’s hands and my senses stop working and I fall.

“Goodnight,” I let myself mumble.

I hope they remember to turn the light off when they leave.


End file.
